Lego responds to sexism critiques with female scientists set

Legos allow you to build pretty much anything, and now the Danish company that invented the toy is trying to build something else — support for females in technology fields.

Introducing: the Lego Research Institute set. It includes three women with scientific professions including a paleontologist, astronomer and chemist.

The product was released through Lego's Lego Ideas program, which allows designers outside the company to design custom sets that then have a chance of becoming actual products after receiving 10,000 votes.

?The release comes months after a 7-year-old girl wrote Lego a letter complaining that all the girl Legos did was just ?"sit at home, go to the beach and shop" and had no jobs, while the boys "went on adventures, worked, saved people, and had jobs, even swam with sharks."

While it may seem like a pretty routine product announcement, there's a lot of scrutiny these days when it comes to how toys portray gender, particularly when it comes to showing women in STEM jobs — that's science, technology, engineering or math.